Comments? Or bulletin board?

After going through the comments under the “O Kadhal Kanmani review,” a reader wrote in via email that not many people read the comments section and therefore it might be useful to… I’ll let you read for yourself. Any thoughts?

Just read the comments to your befitting review of OK Kanmani. What wonderful conversations. Lot’s more drama than the movie! Great read. Made my day!

Is there any way, you can pull this all out of your comments thread and make it like a user-friendly bulletin board? There are plenty of free online tools that make it possible. I think there’s a need for Baradwajrangan.com (BTW, it’s available). Think about it. Your adda is way too cool.

I asked him:

Thanks. But how would that be different? Even now, whoever wants to join in can do so in the comments space, right?

And he replied:

It looks the same. But will be different. The difference is currently no one has a clue that such a vibrant adda exists. It’s all buried. I know a lot of people who read your reviews and go away. They don’t bother to click the comments section.

I am not sure that the current system of comments needs any change, but I think it would be great to have a forum where we could start topics of our own. That means more moderation work for you, or for someone, though.

One other thing that I would like to suggest to cut down on your moderation work – maintain a white list of commentators. The comments from people in this white list show up instantly without moderation – if there is a new commentator, he or she would eventually graduate to this white list after a period of time or a number of comments in which no transgression of the censurable kind is committed.

With the current method, comment themes are driven by your review/post. Even though we have digressions, there are numerous great but related conversations. I do agree that searching might be difficult, but at least you have a handle on the conversations. I don’t mean that from a moderation perspective, but in the fact that conversations revolve topically around that film or post.

With the bulletin board, it becomes an exclusive comments/discussion section where it may be easier to categorize and search. The one issue that I have there is the level of moderation. There is a huge opportunity for topics sprawl especially if commenters can start their own topics (which is the basic reason for a bulletin board) where things can get slightly unwieldy. Some of the bulletin boards are well moderated by a group of admins which then prevents this.

I’ve found that bulletin boards work well when it comes to conversations, where like minded users can talk about their favorite things. Let me give an example: http://www.vtec.net/forums/ Here users congregate to share experiences, offer tips etc. Anyone can start a topic, post anything, usually moderated by a group.

If I had a vote, I’d stick with what we have right now. I like to discuss around something you post/initiate….keeps it focused. I see this as a medium to interact with you and others, on films and related things. Not many established critics give one this opportunity or medium. With a bulletin board, that aspect is lost. You may just not have the time to go through everything there. But I can understand the other viewpoint too. BTW, if anyone wanted a bulletin board discussing films or even your reviews, they could start one today…no need for you to do anything. What makes this place unique is your presence! 🙂 (Seri, seri….) 🙂

You should look into Disqus. It’s like a bridge of both. Also, with WordPress, you can just get a domain name for yourself and keep it everything under wordpress.com itself. Instead of baradwajrangan.wordpress.com, it can be http://www.baradwajrangan.com.

Agree that your comment space is good (credit goes to you – that your writing attract these set of people and to an extent by your responses have also encouraged the right ones) but the bulletin board doesn’t look good aesthetically 🙂 . However silly that sounds!

I don’t know much about this. But I always end up searching for are specific threads within the comments. Like if someone says something, then I am interested in seeing how others thunk about the same thing, through their responses. Right now, we just keep calling out each another while specifically addressing those things (and hence a ctrl-f is good enough). Nesting could help here? Not sure, but just saying that the current comments section looks ok in it’s current form. Just adding a little bit will improve use experience?

I don’t see why someone that doesn’t read comments in a blog should read the same comments in a forum. But the idea of allowing readers to start their own threads (albeit in restricted categories/topics) is an interesting one, but moderating will be lot more work. Delegating the moderation part to volunteers maybe a good idea.

Irrespective, you should shift over to self-hosted WordPress with your own domain is what I feel.

Using disqus will make discussions easier to have and follow. I’d love something like that here because, for me, this blog is a place to have great conversations with people who are sincere enough to try and have them. Around you has grown a community that is not just interested in films but critical analysis of several things as well. An old-format blog with standard comments certainly cannot evolve with the community.

BR: I haven’t a clue about it, but the very idea seems to be a sort of modern Pandora’s box. I’d say it would be great if new topics are begun and discussed all the time but only you can start it. I think a kind of rejuvenation of the “Broad Reflections” or “Bitty Ruminations” would be great. Allowing the readers play “Interviewer” once is a while would be great too.

Please do not go for the nested comments concept. It is difficult to read in mobile.

Also please have a deputy moderator, for sometime the topic is hot and we have to wait for you to brush your teeth and be done with other stuff. Not fair. 😉

@Rahini: I think disqus shows up OK in mobiles. Plus, it needs no moderation: it works by user voting (it must be possible to disable anonymous voting). I think there are enough good people here to make sure that trash is relegated to the bottom of the heap. In addition to encouraging commenter engagement, it allows those who think BR allows stuff to be printed here in the interest of free speech to downvote such trash. I think overall, something like disqus is the way forward. It will really be exciting!

(not canvassing for disqus… have never used it myself before, only seen it used extensively in blogs)

Naah, this is good as it is. It gives a very old world blog feel which is more personalized and people know that you can comment and it will be responded to and a nice discussion can take place. Not as many trolls and not as many discussions proving Godwin’s law etc. Once it is a bulletin board there will be too much moderating work, more frequent digressions and if you don’t moderate I have a feeling it will become like a Rediff or YouTube comments space where people would rather not venture into. These forums, IMO, exist exclusively for readers interaction. This space isn’t like that as the author is very much part of all the discussions.

@brangan: Oh no, not at all! Unlike many others who have complained before, I don’t think any comment — however miasmic — must be edited out of the discussion. But at the same time, I don’t think such comments deserve the same space as other thoughtful comments and discussions. Crowdvote might be a solution for people to shape the discussion as it goes forward. The current flat format is like a situation where two people are discussing the finer points of a proposition from Wittgenstein, and a loud and unfunny uncle butts in to rant about why he doesn’t like German Catholics because they are the main reason Dalits are downtrodden in India according to something he read on the back of a matchbox, and those who disagree surely do so because are afraid of pure truth.

Ive only discovered the comments section under your blog the last few weeks (I used to be one of those who’d just read the review and go away). Took a wordpress account solely so I could join in. I must say Im very impressed by the quality of the comments here ( and your patience in answering them.)

One grouse I have is that when a threads very long (like the OKK thread) and youre reading the last comment (on your mobile) its such a pain to have to scroll to the very top to post your comment.

Ive been looking for something like the wonderful Goodreads app for movies and reading your comments section kind of made me get that same feel that you get in Goodreads : of hearing a lot of wonderful people (it probably helps that the trolls are weeded out) speak about a particular movie that you are interested in and put forth many ideas and perspectives that you never even thought of earlier.

Digressing from the topic, is there something like Goodreads for movies?

Not sure how the bulletin board would work though. Can’t visualise it.

How about a facebook movie group perhaps which you could moderate and people could add threads?

Ashutosh: I went through that link and should still admit that I am partial to the way BR’s blog currently works and looks. This one is clearer to me. Oldest comments on top, newest in bottom, the most favourite/unfavourite ones have upvotes/downvotes/likes and everything is stripped to its basics. Fancy threading and looping only confuse me. Just my take on it. 😀

Only very few threads reach 100+ comments anyway.

BR: Your decision to write a lengthy response as a different post is a good idea. The OKK thread might have been overburdened with class/caste discussions and Lingaa with feminist pontifications. It is easier with two threads having 200 and 100 comments each rather than one with 300 comments.

BR: I haven’t a clue about it, but the very idea seems to be a sort of modern Pandora’s box. I’d say it would be great if new topics are begun and discussed all the time but only you can start it. I think a kind of rejuvenation of the “Broad Reflections” or “Bitty Ruminations” would be great. Allowing the readers play “Interviewer” once is a while would be great too.

Please do not go for the nested comments concept. It is difficult to read in mobile.

Also please have a deputy moderator, for sometime the topic is hot and we have to wait for you to brush your teeth and be done with other stuff. Not fair. 😉

Rahini, you are simply hilarious. But BR going through the comments and moderate it is better. Once he delegates, the personal touch will go which is the USP of this blog.
Intezaar ka phal meeta hota hai.

BR: There is one big problem with the comments section here : lack of nested discussions. This is what a Bulletin Board would solve. If we do not want / need nested discussions then continuing with the current format is good enough. And the rest of the comment can be safely ignored.

However, if we want nested comments then read ahead.

Bulletin boards, as other folks have pointed out comes with its own set of issues. A bulletin board does require more community and moderator involvement, has issues around backup, would require separate logins and not all of them have good voting facilities. I suspect you will end up spending tonnes of time doing admin work around this.

On top of suggestions people have made – disqus, standard bulletin boards etc. There is one other option: Outsourcing the comments to a different platform.

Bear with me here.

One of the world’s largest community and possibly highest rated sites is http://reddit.com. It also has something called as private subreddit.

How will it work :
– You write an article, snippet etc in the normal wordpress page.
– You submit a link to the subreddit from your wordpress page.
– “Allowed” users can then comment as normal.

What are the advantages :
Technical
– Extreme ease of use , mobile friendly, takes all of 5 minutes to setup, little to no administration.
– Automatic backup of content
– Its a private club, people who can/cannot join is entirely dependent on you.
– Highly searchable , if required.
– The site is very fast as it is text only with embedded links.

Functional
– Ability to have clear, nested discussions.
– Can assign sub-moderators , that have lesser privileges than a uber-moderator but can handle the traffic (if that becomes an issue)
– Interested folks can present other links, points of discussions etc. (if that becomes a requirement) and these can be up/down voted by the folks.

Disadvantages
– People who want to comment will need to have a separate login on the reddit site., just like here for WordPress., though compared to WordPress , Reddit logins are faster and they never spam.

Do not go for disqus, the platform is fine, but you only have to look at the commentators on disqus to realise that it someone attracts trolls, and bottom feeders. Can’t fully understand why, but one of the reasons I think is it disallows thumbs down ranking.

The comments facility now is fine. If there are some people who do not know /can’t seem to find that there is a vibrant comments section happening on your reviews, then changing to a new platform is not going to help those people

Is there a way we can do a trial run for this new system? May be after 30-day trial period you can ask for a vote (or take a decision all by yourself, your site and your say 😀 ) and then decide to go ahead and or be happy with what we have (hey, it’s a good system).

Personally, I love the present one like a lot of people mentioned here. Even if the comments sometimes take a life of it’s own (like Rahini’s in Lingaa thread), you bring it out as a separate thought/article and the discussion continues there. So, I would say this is great as such, mainly because, you decide and not anyone else. But if there is this space where anyone (or a selected set) get to start thread, IMO, it will not be BR’s thoughts on which we extrapolate or bring fresh views.

Ashutosh I totally second your point on the totally random comment which sometimes run about ten ‘thumb scroll up’ (I read in mobile). And you curse the person in question for it. The price we pay for free speech 😛 It’s annoying, but I think we can live with it.

venkatesh: Oh, we can have nested comments here too. I just turned the option off because it looks weird, with successive comments veering off to the right side of the screen. This, IMO, is a cleaner look, though you have to go back up the thread to figure out what’s being responded to.

So you are actually asking us to comment on how we should be commenting. Right.

I really like it as it is (and … who reads other people’s rants..er..comments anyway). I just like to read your reviews. If people want to be so narcissistic that they want their comments to be re-read, searched, googled and itemised, I don’t know what to say. As a few persons before said.. its fine now, no frills … if it ain’t broke why fix it.

— I would like to read comments by specific commenters and pull them up more easily – I use ctrl+F for that now, it’s clunky, but it works.

— When I see a particularly interesting conversation, it would be nice to just be able to see that in isolation, with replies nested underneath. We use @ to signify that (or similar notations), but a drop down box with the conversation thread would be peaches (doesn’t have to trickle to the right if it’s a clear drop down with nice boundary lines. (Is this even possible? Or a conjuring of my addled right leaning brain?)

— I do think you should allow “approved” commenters’ comments to appear automatically, and allow other commenters to ascend to such rarefied heights at your discretion.

— You should allow brilliant comments to be awarded cash prizes. We can create a new currency to do that. I vote BRs.

@olemisstarana, Superb comment! I am assuming that we can lend and borrow BRs depending on our “accounts”

Would overdrafts be part of this? 🙂

I have a fitbit. One of the things that I love are the “badges” that you get with your lifetime steps. One badge that I got was the New Zealand badge – that I had walked the length of New Zealand (!!) since I bought the fitbit! Similarly, we can get “badges” from BR as we accumulate BRs! The top 3 badges are Kamal Hassan, Mani Ratnam and Ilayaraja. (Abba…Ilayaraja irukaaru…ilaati enayum indha pasange Brahmin bias-ku accuse panniduvaange!)

If you scroll down to the bottom, you see an indicator telling the reader how many replies in total are on there.

Here there are 109 comments, but not all 109 show up. Only the beginnings of some conversations are visible. If the reader wants to go through the replies that stem from comments they would have to click on the red text that reads “Show more replies in this thread.” It just neatly folds out like a drop down box – no listing to the right.

Also, I do think that the overwhelming majority of commenters here have something interesting to say. I enjoy it all – you, BR are the potentate of a small but thriving meritocracy.

(1) I do agree with Destination Infinity: “I don’t see why someone that doesn’t read comments in a blog should read the same comments in a forum.” So I guess the only advantage of considering a forum is nesting comments?

(2) Maybe use venkatesh’s reddit idea to nest comments. i.e. link my blog post to a reddit comments page where the discussion can continue. (Mind voice: After all, the sucker has offered to volunteer 🙂 )

(3) disqus means lots more moderating duties, plus even those who use it sometimes find it a pain.

(4) Allow long-time/approved commenters to post without moderation. (Mind voice: But this means you won’t get to standardise them. You won’t be able to insert lines between paras, remove the extra space before the period, correct the double space after the period, italicise the quoted portions, and so forth. Are you sure your OCD can handle this?)

(5) Allow guest posts. I am actually open to this even now. I’ll just label it a guest post.

(6) Does anyone on WordPress know how to bring the comments box to the bottom? i.e. below all the comments?

(7) I’m not sure Crowdvote is a great idea. I think anarchy is part of the DNA of the Internet. Too much control goes against the very spirit of it, I think.

Please, if I even get a vote, stick to this blog. I, for one, read the comments every time. The discussions in the comments is sometimes very interesting. I agree that nesting comments make it easier to reply to a specific point. But this is fine as it is.

The problem with a forum is that it will just go out of hand; Rahini called it opening a Pandora’s Box. I agree. I come here to read what you have to say about films, and cinema in general. I would say that anyone who wants to take their conversation/discussion outside the post is more than free to do so – I don’t see why such a platform has to take the place of this blog.

Speaking only for myself, I would miss this space if it were to shut down, or move to a wider, less-moderated (because you won’t be able to) forum which will only decrease the interaction between you and your readers.

I’d vote for the current comments set up– what Shankar said. Also, I’ve seen a number of popular bloggers switch to a more ‘collaborative’ approach to their websites but that only seemed to mute the authors’ voices resulting in loss of interest from me. It looks like I’m in a minority here, but whatever you do please retain the current structure? Create new forums and bulletin boards and whatever else not, but please don’t change anything here (polite voice).

BR, the current settings is user friendly.. but what i would prefer 2 changes..

if there is a series of comments between 2 users (lets say between you and me), i would like to see this as a sequence.. now it does not happen like that and we need to scroll up and down to connect the discussions…

In a forum anybody gets an option to start a topic.. which is great.. but even better would be for the users to pitch in their topics and you as the owner / moderator can pick interesting one from those for further discussions..

Count me among those who like the Comments section just the way it is – clean and simple. I find bulletin boards aesthetically unpleasing. Not a fan of nesting comments either – I rather like it that even when a couple of commenters go on a private digression, they still have to “talk” to the entire “room” and can’t go off to a corner by themselves. I want to listen in on the interesting conversation too and eavesdropping is so undignified. 🙂

Urrrrrrrg Reddit. Reddit suuuuuuuuucks. I know this is a little bit like saying the internet sucks, but reddit really has a knack to let the shit float to the top. How would this work, though – I don’t quite understand the idea of private subreddits. Do you have to be an approved commenter? BR, are you going to continue moderating?

@olemisstarana: uhm, not really. Some subreddits suck, maybe. Somehow, I don’t think you hang out on r/srs or r/beatingwomen. The ones I hang out in (r/personalfinance, r/programming, r/buildapc to name a few) are very serious. Others (r/askreddit + serious, r/eli5, r/til) are really good if you read the first few comments in the top threads. Each thread, after depth=4 or so, becomes crap.

Btw, reddit is open-source. Anyone with time and no job can setup their own “reddit” 🙂 https://github.com/reddit/reddit. Understandably, it’s not as popular as wordpress, but I can make “my” reddit public this evening or tomorrow if you want to take a look.

Hi BR, Would like to know if you are planning on writing an article on women in the film industry. Not just the social impediments they face but also regarding the unique artistic perspective they bring to this art form as film makers. Would also like to know what you think about the debate on film stock vs digital. I know that this comment is irrelevant to the proceedings however I did not know where else to post it.

hari: You can create private subreddits and BR can create his own one.

olemisstarana : Ah, kids these days ….. 🙂 I have been with reddit since 2005 or so onwards when it was really a private club, you almost knew everyone who came on the site.

You are quite right though – the default reddit – lets shit float to the top. But we are not talking about that, at least i am not,

We are talking about

Create a Private Subreddit.
BR is the Uber-mod , he gets to decide how he wants the subreddit to function
He can do what he does here, commenters have to register to comment or vote up/down in exactly the same way as here.
He can, if he wants , make the subreddit a purely private club meaning you mail him, he approves you and then you can see the contents.
He can if he decides, have sub-moderators that can pick the slack when he gets time to sleep.
He can ban people (ala the one who shall not be named).
He can restrict voting on certain topics if he wants.
In short, it will work in exactly the same way as it does here with the added advantages of :
Nested comments. Now that you replied but did not mention my name i would not have caught the question, except i always read your comments. Well , cause you are special like that :-).
But on a serious note, comment nesting is really useful and i think sorely lacking here.

I am no fan of Reddit especially the main page, that just caters to the Lowest Common Denominator but the subreddits (the good ones) are extremely useful and surprisingly enough you regularly get gold mine information there. As an example, on r/fitness you regularly have Gov Schwarznegger drop in with suggestions on form, diet, technique etc. (Admittedly thats an extreme example).

“He can, if he wants , make the subreddit a purely private club meaning you mail him, he approves you and then you can see the contents.”

This. This makes it okay. I really don’t want to wake up to exercises in misogyny in my inbox.

And yes, yes, @Pranesh – I do hang out on subreddits that are relatively safe, birding, hcm etc. But even there on occasion turds in fedoras show up. And in subreddits that are styled as spaces for women, phew! My point is that r/stormfront, r/coontown, r/beatingwomen are not the subreddits that somehow corral the crap.

Reddit still sucks, particularly if you are identified as female, unf. Sorry.

@Olemisstarana : Pranesh is also right – you can have your own reddit , it doesnt take long to set it up. The bigger problem is managing the infrastructure , back-ups, ensuring its always on, secure etc etc.

And i hear you on the misogyny front , like anywhere else make it anonymous enough and ensure freedom of speech and you are bound to get all sorts , but that’s just life.

Having said that , most of the “serious” sub-reddits are actually self-moderating and anything above +4 is usually a useful comment.

Rahul: I thought it’d be an easier decision, but comments are all over the place 🙂

I like the way the site in JB’s link worked — though I hated the way it looked.

Same thing with the reddit. Went to see what it looked like — and didn’t like it. Looks cluttered to me.

The only forum I’m familiar with is the iMDB one (the Message Board at the bottom). I like the idea of something like that beneath my review — with each comment “thread” headlined by a topic and kept separate.

Here’s another one dedicated to laggards (which by the way includes me! I sent my very first e-mail in 1998 with just a subject, thinking that I had to send the subject first and then the e-mail. Oh and I did my Masters in Information Systems later!)

brangan – it is easy to style phpbbforum to match the site’s look and feel. If you like the way reelviews forum works, it is not that big a deal to setup something like that integrate with your wordpress site. Let me know if you are interested.. I can help – no strings attached and no monetary benefits expected.

Baddyji (just plain Baddy sounds rude): check out amitabh bachchan’s blog on tumblr. His EF (extended family that he calls it) are friends with each other now for years (visiting each other and whatnot) and then people have ability to comment on their friend’s post

I think you should commercialise it a bit. E.g. charge people one time fee to be able to get on ‘safe’ list of commentators and charge in various ways (that way you can hire IT help on your site in future and even consider hiring writers to ghost write blogs/comments, the way Modi or Subramaniyam Swami do on Twitter etc 😉

Perhaps I am too late to this discussion, but one thing that I have always found hard on your site is reading through the comments section. I mean, if there are 100+ comments, there is no quick way to read the latest ones except by scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Perhaps a menu to sort the comments would be very useful (for starters, you can look at your employer’s website). Or is there a way that I don’t know of? Maybe this has been touched upon in the 94 comments above me but again, I have no quick way to check this.

Also, when I view on an iphone, it’s very hard to scroll through the comments. For some reason, the reading view mode works only for the body of the post. Is there a way to enable it for comments as well? Would be very useful.

Google sites are the way to go. We have just gone entirely Google in our organisation and after the initial apprehensions we have now all accepted and reconciled to its effectiveness and surrendered to the fact that it reads every thing on our phones and chromebooks 🙂 It’s almost like letting a stranger sit in your living room and observe everything you do and then comment on your activities, remind you of tasks, give you tips on holiday destinations, etc.

I digress…

Google site. Just get your own Google site and copy paste your articles there… People can discuss to their hearts content, become friends, add each other to the ‘BR mates’ social circles and you can even get statistics on traffic / activity if you prefer.

Organize the comments section already, for God’s sake! i’ve been reading the OKK comments section for 3 days and now i’m irritated. i like BR’s IMDB idea. It’s simple, more organized than the present format and works great. Somebody help him do it.